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Recognition for edge ideas – Prizes awarded to winning contestants of the Siemens "Global University Challenge – Automation meets Edge" in Nuremberg

Nuremberg, 2018-Oct-08

The "Global University Challenge – Automation meets Edge" is an Open Innovation contest initiated by Siemens with the aim of encouraging students to develop solutions to meet the challenges of industrial production. Of the total of 55 suggestions submitted by teams of contestants from all over the world, there were ten app ideas which ultimately stood out for the panel of judges. The members of the winning teams were given the opportunity to develop their ideas to the prototype stage with the collaboration of Siemens experts. These will be presented as part of a Hackathon held during an international week of events from October 8 – 12 which starts today. Alongside the opportunity of working on their solutions with the help of professional experts, a total of 10,000 Euro and additional tech prizes will be divided between the winning teams.

As part of an international week of events from 8 to 12 October, the winners of the Siemens contest “Global University Challenge – Automation meets Edge” will present their ideas and receive their prizes.

The response to the contest was enormous. The panel of judges made up of experts from the Siemens Factory Automation Business Unit received 55 ideas between May 2 and June 19, 2018. “The response exceeded all our expectations,” said Martin Raab, Head of Innovation Management at Factory Automation and challenge initiator. During the competition period, the students from international Siemens partner universities were given the opportunity to form interdisciplinary teams and to submit their suggestions for solving industrial challenges on the basis of edge computing. Edge computing is one of the megatrends driving the field of automation, and is set to fundamentally change the face of industry. To enable its dormant potential to be leveraged, distributed network structures and creative minds are required. This is what prompted Siemens to launch the “Global University Challenge – Automation meets Edge” contest, whose winning teams are from partner universities such as TU Munich, RWTH Aachen and Tongji, Budapest, Manchester and Newcastle.

The challenge focuses on solutions developed by students on the basis of edge computing.

Three central pillars of edge computing

Siemens Industrial Edge is based on three blocks. The first of these is the centralized management infrastructure, which is formed on the cloud level by IT-Office. This is where central administration and maintenance of Siemens Industrial Edge takes place. The second block is formed by edge devices. This is the term given to all hardware devices with an installed software platform which enable the execution of edge apps. The third block is made up of the edge apps. These are executed on the edge devices such as industrial PCs, and enable the analysis of high-frequency data such as power consumption data at the machine.